Oh yeah, buy Wayne's book!

Dropping the motors the easy part, but your all leaving out the fact that once the motors removed it undoubtedly turns into a "while your in there" project. :p

With a leak that bad, there's a good chance it's just the oil pressure sender on top of the engine.

If that's it, it's a $10 part and 1/2 hour of time to replace.

Seems crazy to me to drop an engine without first finding the source of the leak.

As others have stated, don't drop the motor yet. Get the thing steam cleaned first and reevaluate the leaks. My money is on the oil return tubes leaking. Secondary leaks being thermostat oring, oil pressure switch, and cam feed lines. None of these require pulling the engine.

Cam feed lines, and three oil return tubes cost me a day or less and less than $100 IIRC, not a drop of oil in 8 years.

Thats what I thought, but for some reason I said thermostat in my eariler post. Going back and forth between the Porsche and an American CTS gets confusing at times.

What dDan said. I pulled mine and it took five years to get it back together.

Most oil leaks, esp. ones that spring up that quickly and are leaking that much, can be fixed easily with the engine in the car.

so the odds are highly in your favor that you don't need to take the engine out.

Well, I will cross my fingers that an drop won't be needed.

How do I go about getting the engine steam cleaned? Is there somewhere I can rent one or is it better to drive the car to a place that does this??

They usually have a place you take the car to, put it up on a lift, and then spray the underside. Call local detailing shops. Im sure they will know.

Ok will do. Thanks!

Can you take a picture of the underside of the motor and post it?
Might be something obvious that someone will see.

'Tis a piece of cake, man. The thing that takes the longest is removing the twelve CV joint bolts.

In the Pacific Northwest, all you need to do is announce the date, put beer in the fridge, fire up the barbecue, and the crew shows up.

Maybe Texans aren't as friendly or helpful as us liberals, but it works like a charm in the Pacific Northwest. <wink> Then we post pictures.

Well, I have a feeling that Texas Pelicans would be just as ready to lend a hand (and relieve me of some beer and barbecue ribs...) but I guess we'll see if the time comes!!

Now I have to talk with the wife about how to get a little elbow room in that garage...

Jim! I still have 'the pallet' in the garage.

Clean it up first and ID what's leaking. Fix what makes sense now, you might not need to drop it. Once you do, keep Pelican on speed dial. :)

Ya got that right!

Did you literally use a pallet? Because I did, and figured I was the only one redneck enough to do so. Strap engine to pallet, strap pallet to floor jack, carefully balance and block often on the way down to avoid disaster. It actually worked pretty well, though now that I'm not poor I'd just go buy a transmission jack instead.

But of course. Custom cut to fit the engine, used on several local cars. Used a motorcycle jack though. Yeah, redneck I guess. Works great. :)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploads/Lu2_052403.JPG

As you can see here, the m/c jack and pallet under engine, and tranny jack under, you guessed it, the tranny. Works like a charm.